It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Disaster!
by Arctic Banana
Summary: When the Christmas season descends on the human population, Shepard grants the crew permission to celebrate. While helping Miranda and Kasumi go Christmas shopping for a tree and a Secret Santa gift, Grunt's petty vandalism accidentally gets Miranda arrested and thrown in jail. Hopefully Kasumi can bust her and her scary cellmates out of C-Sec in time for the Christmas Eve party!
1. Zero Hour

_This fic is done! It's finally done!_

 _I have been bringing this out to work on it every Christmas since 2012, and it just seems that it never got done. After so many years, my old writing was really beginning to show its age, so this year I opted to just rewrite the damn thing entirely and add in some new ideas here and there to make it longer and flow better. I fear some of this might still show some of my old writing, but in the end, I like the final result better than the bits and pieces I salvaged from my many attempts to write it in the previous years anyway._

 _Anyway, please enjoy this silly little Christmas fic that I initially came up with four years ago while planning a Christmas party!_

* * *

In space it was easy to lose track of the days. Even galactic standard time was a little hard to keep up with, let alone the days on one's home planet or colony. One could barely even tell if it was supposed to be day or night and most just figured the morning started whenever they happened to wake up. It was reasonable that Shepard was more than a little surprised when his emails contained a few more Christmas greetings than he was used to.

"EDI, what day is it on Earth?" he asked.

"Specify," she replied.

"Uh...Alberta. What day is it in Alberta, Canada?" he specified.

"It is December 3rd, Shepard," she answered.

"December? Already? I didn't even know Halloween had passed!"

He set a filter to have all Christmas greetings delivered to a particular folder so that they wouldn't interfere with any more important ones and watched as it almost halved his inbox. As he checked through the messages, he noticed one from one of the crew members.

 _Commander,_

 _I wasn't sure if you had any plans for Christmas, but a few of us were wondering if maybe we could have a small party? It doesn't have to be anything major, just maybe one day where we can all take a break and relax._

Shepard barely noticed the noisy sound of his hamster chewing up the corner of a datapad on the desk next to him as he was too lost in thought to notice anything else around him. "EDI, put a memo out. Our party is from the 24th to the 25th."

"You need two days for a party, Commander?" EDI inquired.

"One for the party, one so everyone can play with their gifts."

"I will get the word out right away, Commander."

* * *

Shepard had always tried to accommodate all of the major holidays both human and alien that his crew members normally took part in. Liara had once requested a celebration for some asari harvest festival that Shepard had later found out was similar to Thanksgiving and he allowed Tali to put up a decoration honoring an important anniversary to the quarian people. The easiest holidays to sit through turned out to be Garrus' turian holidays, which mostly seemed to be celebrated by way of getting drunk and shooting things. He even suffered through Grunt's "Punch A Krantt In the Quad Day" celebration, which apparently was a real krogan holiday, as he found out through research conducted later that day from the medical ward. Since he hadn't quite ruled out the possibility of ever having kids in the future, he made sure to keep a list of all known krogan holidays in hopes of never being caught unaware again.

As Christmas grew nearer, all the human members of the crew that celebrated began to grow jittery and excited in anticipation of their time off while those that didn't celebrate were just as happy to get time off as their friends who did. Some of the non-human crew members began to grow curious about this holiday. Maybe some of them had heard about it, but they never actually saw it celebrated. Garrus and Tali were already quite familiar with the holiday, having served with Shepard before through the Earth month of December (and also because Garrus had seen the Citadel shopping rush before when he was still C-Sec), and Mordin had once studied it as a fascinating part of human culture in his youth, but many were thoroughly new to the concept.

"Does your home planet have any other winter traditions besides this Christmas?" Thane was overheard asking.

"Of course it does," a crew member replied. "Every time there's a slight chance for snow, it's ceremonial for everyone to go on a pilgrimage to the grocery stores to buy up all of the milk and bread so that when the first flurries come down, you can celebrate with the traditional feast of soggy, milk-soaked bread."

Grunt turned his head away from Thane and the crew member. "What is this 'Christmas' holiday everyone keep talking about?"

Both Kasumi and Miranda were both on the chatty side about this Christmas holiday, so he figured they were a good place to start asking questions about it. Both of them seemed to express surprise that he didn't already know about the holiday until it occurred to them that not only was Grunt not human, but he was also technically barely a few months old and had yet to learn some things.

"It's an Earth holiday," Kasumi started with the obvious. "It's often celebrated by overplaying the same ten songs that are covered over and over again by different artists, the regifting of the same stale fruit cake until it finally deteriorates about a hundred or so years after it was first baked, and relatives that you don't even like showing up at your house unannounced, expecting that you feed them and give them presents."

"And you decorate a tree with lights and ornaments," Miranda added.

"And give tacky sweaters to your friends and family as gifts!" Kasumi added. She held up a pair of knitting needles tangled up in some burgundy colored yarn. "I've been working on mine since March!"

Of all the things that they mentioned about Christmas, of course there would be only one thing that Grunt latched onto. "Gifts?" he asked. "Like what kind of gifts? Besides sweaters and this cake made of fruit of which you speak?"

"Like any kind you want," Kasumi replied. "Some people gift food or clothes or toys..."

Jack came out of nowhere and hopped up onto Grunt's back. The krogan didn't even flinch from the invasion of personal space. Jack must jump up on him all the time without warning. "I'm giving everybody a sock," she butted in.

"You're giving everybody socks?" Miranda asked.

"No, not socks as in plural. _A_ sock, as in one. Then when everybody's birthday rolls around, they get another sock so they'll have a full pair." She patted Grunt's hump affectionately and climbed back down, grabbing several shopping bags that she had set on the floor and carrying them towards the elevator so she could head back to her isolated dwelling in the cargo hold. They noticed that the bags were full of mismatched socks from an Omega thrift shop. "I'll see you when you come back down, Turtle!" Jack said to Grunt, calling him by her affectionate nickname for him.

"Oh my god, I don't think she's kidding about the sock thing," Miranda stated.

"I hope she at least has enough socks for the entire crew to get one. It would be a shame if someone woke up disappointed on Christmas morning to find out that they were the only one who didn't get a sock," Kasumi joked. An idea suddenly occurred to her. Miranda noticed that something was up immediately when she noticed the sudden excitement on her face. "I know! Why don't we get everyone together and do a Secret Santa thing? That way everyone on the crew will get at least one gift on Christmas morning!"

"You want us to do a Secret Santa sock exchange?" Miranda asked.

"No, not socks!" Kasumi shook her head. "I mean...well..." She looked at Miranda. "Come on, let's go to your office and we'll iron out the details and tell everyone afterwards."

* * *

Samara noticed the huge line leading from Miranda's room. She'd told everyone they could stop by all day to draw a name from the "Secret Santa jar", not anticipating that they'd all show up at once to get there before all the "good names" got drawn. What they defined as a good name versus a bad one she had no idea and was sure was mildly offensive to someone who would be considered a "bad name".

"I take it that this 'Christmas' is a well beloved holiday on Earth," Samara observed. She hadn't signed up for the program since she didn't see any value in material possessions and thus considered the entire gesture pointless, but it was nice that the humans could get something meaningful out of it.

"Yeah, totally! I look forward to it every year!" Joker replied. "I've been secretly installing a reindeer-seeking laser cannon onto the Normandy's landing gear since last October so I can shoot Santa down from the sky and take all his loot this year!"

"Why do I get the frightening impression that you're not joking?" Shepard asked.

"Wanna see the blueprints? I drew them when I was like, nine!"

"You're next," Shepard pointed out as Garrus and Tali walked out side by side.

"So who did you get?" Tali asked.

Garrus glimpsed at the slip of paper in his hand. The name "Tali'Zorah" was written neatly in purple ink in her handwriting. He quickly crumpled it up before she could see the name he'd drawn. "Shepard," he replied, using the first name off the top of his head that he could think of.

"Lucky. I got Grunt. I have no idea what to get him," she replied. "He likes food. Maybe I'll just order him a crate of varren jerky in assorted flavors."

Joker chose a name and looked at it in disgust. "Zaeed? What the hell am I supposed to get him? The only thing that I know about him is that he's scary!"

Kenneth walked out of the room with a smile on his face after having drawn Gabby. "If she asks, I'm telling her I drew you," he whispered to Shepard on the way past.

If the excuse names people gave after drawing their friends was anything to go by, apparently Shepard's name was in the jar at least 27 times. At least it made it more confusing to figure out who really had drawn Shepard's name.

Once everyone else got their scrap, Miranda had the last name in the jar. She groaned when she read who it was. Of all the names in the jar, this one had to be the leftover, and she suddenly realized what defined a "bad name". "I got Jack," she informed Kasumi. "I didn't even know that she entered until I saw her picking a name."

"Oh yeah," Kasumi nodded. "Tali didn't want her to feel left out, so she went down into the cargo area and asked her if she wanted to be entered. Apparently she was pretty enthusiastic about the idea." Of course. Jack apparently liked Tali for some odd reason that no one could fathom, so of course Tali would be nice to her in return.

Miranda imagined that Jack wouldn't be enthusiastic for long when she inevitably learned who was getting her a present. What was she supposed to get her? The two couldn't even stand each other! "Well if she's in the the exchange, I shudder to think what she's getting for whoever she drew. They're probably getting a really big sock," Miranda said sarcastically. She doubted that Jack would really put much worthwhile thought into her gift. "Maybe I should get her a decent shirt and some therapy?"

Kasumi looked at Miranda with concern. An idea popped in her head. "Oh, I know! I'm going Christmas shopping! Why don't you come with me and I'll help you find something!" she suggested.

"Well, that can't hurt I guess," Miranda shrugged. Kasumi spied on everyone in the crew anyway. If anyone knew the kinds of things that Jack was secretly into, it would be Kasumi. She just hoped that she wanted to know what kind of things Jack was secretly into.

"You know what, screw it. I'll just get him a framed holo of a sloth," Joker said as he walked away.

* * *

 _I hope you guys like this fic because I'm certainly iffy about it. :P_


	2. One Week Before Christmas

_All of this was edited while listening to traditional Christmas songs like "Down With The Sickness" by Disturbed and "Ghost in the Mist" by Lacuna Coil...because after two months of hearing Madonna try to belt out Santa Baby every time I go to the grocery store, I needed a damn reprieve._

 _...though considering this same grocery store plays the Macarena all of the rest of the year, maybe they were doing me a favor._

* * *

The last Christmas that Shepard had spent on the Normandy SR-1, the "Christmas tree" was actually a mound of laundry atop a cardboard box that Joker had sarcastically wrapped lights around as a stand in for a real tree. It stood for about a day before Wrex accidentally trampled it in a drunken stupor and probably wouldn't have lasted any longer anyway once Ash and Liara discovered that some of their clothes that had gone missing from the laundry room had been pilfered into the pile. When Joker found out that they would have an actual honest to god Christmas tree this year, he was excited until he saw the sad, cheap little thing that Cerberus had supplied them with.

It was barely two feet tall, so everyone easily towered over it, and the plastic, dusty needles were falling all over the floor. Garrus swore that the note scribbled in Batarian that they found inside the box said something about being trapped in a closet at the factory and being forced to eat plastic needles and fake snow for survival. Kasumi was admiring the tree from a distance and trying not to laugh while Shepard and Joker both looked a little more than mildly disappointed with it.

"Does anyone else hear Charlie Brown singing Christmas carols from somewhere?" Joker asked.

Shepard picked it up and set it on a table. "Well maybe if we set it on something..."

"Yeah, if you leave it on a table, the top is almost eye level with a volus," he joked. "What is this, Commander? I thought Cerberus promised us a tree! The laundry pile looked better than this!"

"I think we can salvage it somehow. Maybe it'll look better once we decorate it." He tried to adjust one of the fake branches to conceal a gap. All at once, every single plastic needle fell off and covered the top of the table in a carpet of sickly green. "Okay. So. Do you think anyone would notice if we taped them all back on?"

"Commander, can we please just get an actual tree?" Joker pleaded. "We were promised a tree, not some plastic frame resembling a tree!"

The ventilation kicked on and sucked up all of the needles. There was a shout from somewhere in the mess hall where the needles were now raining down through the vents on anyone who was currently on their lunch break. Shepard sighed and stared at the metal and plastic skeleton of a tiny, fake tree.

"Shepard, if I may," Kasumi spoke up. "Miranda and I were going Christmas shopping at the Citadel tomorrow. We can pick up a tree there and ship it back to you guys while we're shopping."

"Can they?" Joker pleaded.

Shepard looked from Kasumi, who looked eager to help, to Joker, who looked hopeful for a tree that wasn't yet another disappointment like the laundry tree of almost two and a half years ago. "Okay, as long as it's not infested with anything," Shepard finally agreed. "Just don't tell the Illusive Man." He looked upwards for lack of a face to look at and added, "That goes for everyone."

"I have not said anything," EDI replied.

"SHEPARD!" someone from the mess hall called for help.

The commander sighed. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go rescue the rest of my crew from the ventilation."

* * *

Despite the lack of a tree to decorate, the crew worked like busy bees to prep for the Christmas Eve party. Gardner pulled a few sugar cookie recipes and put in an order to be picked up upon their arrival at the Citadel for the various ingredients he'd need for cooking for the party. The decoration attempts were slowed a bit when Grunt ate a string of lights that Jacob had been busy hanging over a doorway. On the plus side, he and Jack were amused by the fact that his stomach now glowed in the dark in pretty colors, which at least kept him busy for a little while.

Eventually though he lost interest and wandered back out into the world. "Whatcha doin'?" he asked Zaeed.

Zaeed slowly looked up and realized that Grunt was hovering over him. "None of your business," he replied before returning to his search. He'd drawn Garrus in the Secret Santa and was busy trying to find him something that was still in stock at the Citadel. So far it seemed like the only thing he could find were Furbies, which made sense because they were so terrifying that no one in their right minds would want to buy them anyway.

"Are you going to eat that?" he asked, pointing to the half of a sandwich that sat on a plate next to the laptop Zaeed was using. He then scooped it up and ate it, plate and all, without waiting for him to respond.

"Well I was," Zaeed grumbled.

"Are you going to drink that?" he asked, pointing at an unopened can of soda.

"Will you get the hell out of here?!" Zaeed snapped.

Grunt feigned offense at his anger. "Fine. I'll go see what everyone else is doing," he said before leaving. He quickly ran back in and snatched the soda before running back out.

* * *

"Does that look crooked to you?" Jacob asked as he stood back and looked at the lights he'd just biotically hung up over the door in the medbay.

"Hm..." Chakwas took a step back and tilted her head. "Just a little bit. Maybe if you straighten that end a little."

He tried to biotically straighten it, but ended up making the other end crooked in the process. "Give me a chair. I'll just climb up and fix it," he said when he tired of messing with it.

Unfortunately he seemed to just make them worse by doing it manually. The lights dangled down in the doorway in a huge tangle and Jacob was beginning to realize he should have just continued to do it biotically. He was about to step down when the door flew open and the chair was knocked over by a charging body. He fell off the wall, tearing all of the lights down and nearly hanging himself in the process.

"Did you guys get the lights hung up yet?" Grunt asked.

"Why, so you can eat them again?" Chakwas asked without a slight hint of amusement in her tone. "I'm not pulling them back out for you again!"

"I think I broke my lungs..." Jacob gasped from the floor.

"Grunt, please, just go somewhere else so we can finish hanging the lights!" Chakwas requested with exasperation.

"Grunt, are you bothering people?"

The krogan turned around. Shepard was just beyond the door, helping sweep up the plastic needles from the fake tree that still littered the room. "Yeah, kind of," he admitted.

Shepard looked around and saw that Jack was at the table watching everyone decorating and cleaning up plastic needles but not doing much to help. "Jack, will you watch him so he'll stop getting into trouble?" he asked.

"Eh. Whatever," Jack shrugged. "C'mon, Turtle." She led Grunt to Miranda's office. Miranda was busy sorting through some files when they entered. "Here, Shepard says you have to watch him," Jack said before pushing Grunt in and walking away.

"What?! Why?!" Miranda asked.

"I don't know. Maybe he just likes to see you miserable," she replied. The door shut behind her as she walked back to the table to watch everyone without helping. Shepard was glaring at her from across the room. "What? Either way, he's out of your hair, isn't he?" she asked.

* * *

 _Both the laundry Christmas tree and the fake, crap one are based on true stories. Let's just say Christmas with my dad is an event._


	3. Six Days Before Christmas

The door swished open and Kasumi smiled cheerfully at Miranda. "Are you ready to go on our...oh..."

Grunt sat on her desk in the middle of all her work, eating a fake plastic plant that had once decorated the room. Miranda sat behind it looking like she was ready to flay someone alive biotically. "Yes. I'm ready. I couldn't be any more ready to get off this ship than I already was," she replied through clenched teeth.

"Are you going somewhere?" Grunt asked.

"Nowhere that concerns you," Miranda replied bitterly. "Tell Jack that she's supposed to be watching you."

"But every time I go downstairs to talk to Jack, she says I'm going to ruin my present and tells me to go back upstairs and talk to you," Grunt replied.

"She's getting you a sock, Grunt! She's getting everybody a sock! It's not exactly a surprise anymore!" Miranda pointed out.

"Well, maybe I can see what Shepard's doing then," Grunt sighed.

The krogan hopped off the desk and walked out of the room. There was a loud crash when he somehow got a strand of lights tangled around his leg and dragged them all off the wall outside. "Grunt! I just finished hanging those!" Jacob said in exasperation.

"Well hang them better next time," Grunt replied nonchalantly as he continued walking away, dragging the rest of the lights down with him.

Kasumi watched with concern while Jacob tried to salvage what lights he hadn't damaged by tearing them off the wall. Gardner looked just as frustrated when he had to shoo Grunt away after the krogan grabbed and ate several handfuls of raw sugar cookie dough.

"Maybe we should take him with us," she suggested.

"What?" Miranda asked as though she couldn't believe what Kasumi was even suggesting. "Why would I ever want to bring Grunt along?"

"People are busy and someone has to watch him so they can finish decorating and getting ready for the party," she pointed out.

"The krogan is a walking disaster area! No way do I want him near me while I'm out shopping!" Miranda said angrily. "He can't be trusted alone for five minutes. What makes you think we can trust him in a store?"

Grunt popped his head back into the room. "How do I work the big, cold rectangle with all the food in it?"

Miranda never in her years expected she'd ever have to explain to a krogan how to open a fridge. Did they not have refrigeration on Tuchanka? "You pull the handle..." she pointed out.

"Oh, okay, thanks," he replied before popping back out. A second later he popped back in. "What about the colder one that has the popsicles?"

Kasumi looked at Miranda with concern for Grunt in her eyes. "Okay fine, we'll take him with us," she finally gave in.

* * *

It was amusing how you could always tell what species was having a holiday by who was swarming the stores all at once. Anytime some sacred prothean event arrived, the Citadel would look like a mass jellyfish migration, and it was absolutely hard to navigate when a few hundred elcor converged on one spot and clogged up all of the walkways. Today the Citadel looked like a zombie apocalypse as humans converged like disaster scavengers on the kiosks.

Kasumi never had that many people to buy presents for in the past. It was usually just Keiji and maybe a handful of mutual friends of theirs that happened to be in the area at the time. Normally she would slip in, take whatever she needed, and slip back out again in the holiday rush and no one was the wiser. She lamented that now that she had to get so many gifts this year, it wasn't feasible to just take what she needed unless she wanted to make several trips back to the Normandy to drop it all off to prevent anyone from noticing.

Now would have been a perfect moment to rob the place blind too. The "It's Less Than A Week Before Christmas" shopping rush had the Citadel shops absolutely swarming with humans trying to find gifts that wouldn't make it obvious to their families that they had waited until the absolute last possible moment to buy their gifts. Kasumi kept reassuring Miranda that they'd find something suitable for Jack, but the more people they saw mobbing the hapless kiosk operators, the less hope Miranda had they'd actually find anything.

There were lights on display in the parts where C-Sec allowed them to stay up and a few small shops had sprung up here and there at temporary kiosks where Earth's patrons could easily find things not usually readily available on the Citadel, such as ornaments, cards, and other Christmas knickknacks. Some of the food vendors took advantage of the crowd by selling their own alien takes on Christmas themed cookies and eggnog. It was probably safest not to ask what kind of eggs went into that nog though, especially when one ordered from that cheap hole-in-the-wall place down by the docks. Probably the most baffling piece of Christmas merchandise that they saw for sale was an all-elcor ensemble singing Christmas carols. Kasumi ended up buying a copy of their album when her natural curiosity refused to let her pass it up.

"Three and a half hours of listening to elcor trying to belt out 'Silent Night'. Yeah, that's totally how I want to spend my Christmas Eve," Miranda said sarcastically while they waited at the counter of a fast food restaurant.

"Good, because I got you a copy as a stocking stuffer," Kasumi replied facetiously.

"Okay ladies, here's your peppermint milkshakes," a salarian employee said as he set two cups on the counter. "Two medium and one..." he reached for the floor and grabbed the handle of a bucket, setting it on the counter next to the cups, "...krogan size."

"We're out of big straws," the turian employee replied before he stuck the tiniest straw they had inside the bucket.

"That's okay, I don't think it will matter to him much," Kasumi replied. She grabbed her milkshake, making sure to take the one that was marked 'dairy-free' for herself, and the handle of the krogan-sized one. "Where do you think Grunt got off to?" She hoped he wasn't far. She didn't want to lug his heavy milkshake all over the Citadel.

"I don't know. I hope he didn't wedge himself inside the railing again," Miranda replied. "I really don't feel like waiting for C-Sec to get him out a second time."

Miranda spotted a stand that was selling Christmas trees that had been imported from either Earth or one of its space colonies. There was a stamp on the sign certifying that they'd been inspected and passed by C-Sec. Last year someone had smuggled in uninspected trees and the Citadel had a small crisis when they turned out to be infested with tree spiders. They were for the most part harmless to most races, but it turned out that salarians had allergic reactions to their bites that caused them to turn fluorescent colors for a few days. It was an amusing sight for all but the affected salarians.

They both kept an eye out for him while they chose a tree, careful to pick one that wouldn't be too big to fit inside the ship or too small like the fake one had been, and had it shipped off to the Normandy. Now all they had to do was find Grunt.

"Where was the last place you remember seeing him?" Kasumi asked.

"Shortly before we bought the milkshakes," she said thoughtfully. "I think he was headed that way..." she pointed.

Less than three minutes later, they finally found Grunt, or rather he found them. "I got a tree. Let's go!" he shouted from behind them.

Kasumi and Miranda turned around and were stunned silent when they saw Grunt dragging an alien fruit tree behind him. The dirt-clumped roots suggested that he'd literally just ripped one out of the ground at the Citadel's community garden.

"Grunt, they import trees from Earth for that purpose!" Miranda pointed out.

Grunt looked at the tree that he was dragging and then noticed one of the Christmas tree kiosks nearby. "Oh...guess I should put this back then, huh?" he asked.

"Yeah...you might want to hurry before C-Sec gets here..." Kasumi nodded, looking around cautiously all the while.

Grunt stood there staring at them. "I don't know how to return it," he admitted.

"Come on, before we get caught!" Miranda said in exasperation. She grabbed Grunt and dragged him towards the garden, aware that everyone around them was staring at them.

* * *

Grunt held the heavy tree in an upright position in the middle of the dirt. "This is where I got it from," he said.

"Hold it in place while I cover the roots with dirt," Miranda instructed.

She crouched by the roots and started pushing dirt over them, lamenting that she was wearing white and the stains would be noticeable. She only got the roots half buried before the tree grew slack and started to tip over like the Tower of Pisa.

"Can you hold it up a little bit straighter please, Grunt?" she asked irritably. "Grunt?" Miranda looked up and noticed that Grunt was no longer holding the tree upright. In fact, he was nowhere nearby. She turned around and saw that Kasumi was nowhere in sight either, though it was highly probable that she was nearby and just invisible. "Where did you both go?"

"Might we inquire what you're doing here, ma'am?" a voice behind her asked.

Miranda slowly turned around and found herself staring face to face with a pair of C-Sec officers. Neither of them looked particularly amused, especially when the tree she had been hastily trying to replant fell over and crushed a baby tomato plant. The dirt that she had spent several minutes trying to tuck over the roots catapulted all over the officers, who looked even less pleased to have just had a mound of dirt launched at their faces.

"Crap..." she grumbled.

* * *

Kasumi felt bad for ditching Miranda when she saw the C-Sec officers catch sight of what they were doing, but she had never been to prison and didn't want to start now, especially right before Christmas. Still, she couldn't leave Miranda locked up at C-Sec for the holidays either. Miranda could consider herself fortunate that it had been Kasumi that was with her at the time of the arrest since while most of the crew didn't like her for her belligerent behavior and tendency to get on everyone's nerves, Kasumi was one of the few crew members that actually liked her. Anyone else would have left her ass in jail.

Like Grunt for instance...

"Do we really have to get her out?" he whined. "We can just tell Jack that this is Miranda's gift to her. It'll solve her Secret Santa problem!"

"Yes, we really have to get her, Grunt," Kasumi replied. "Besides, I pulled her name from the Secret Santa. Breaking her out of C-Sec will be _my_ gift to her."

"Do I have to help?" he whined.

Kasumi sighed. "No, you don't have to help," she replied.

"Good, because I still have to find a gift for Jack too," he said cheerfully.

"Well if all else fails and we can't bust her out, you can say this is a gift to her from you too," Kasumi replied.


	4. Five Days Before Christmas

The lights in the room were bright and hot, perfectly engineered to make one feel nervous even if they had been perfectly calm when brought in. Miranda squinted at the turian C-Sec officer standing at the desk across from her, one of the two who had arrested her, who also turned out to be her interrogator.

"I already told you, I wasn't the one that destroyed the tree!" Miranda protested as he continued grilling her.

"Uh huh," the officer nodded skeptically. "It was your imaginary krogan friend who could turn invisible, right?"

"No, the krogan doesn't turn invisible, only my human friend can do that! She's a thief and she uses this cloaking technology, right? And..."

"Sure," he interrupted her. "Have you been drinking or using any illicit substances lately? Hallex? Red Sand? Blue Sky? Pixie Stix?"

"What? You think I'm on drugs?" Miranda asked in an offended tone.

His human partner entered the room with a datapad in hand. "So where are we going to put her? All the holding cells are full right now."

"I hate this time of year..." the turian sighed. "Where did we put Buttons when we brought him in an hour ago?"

"Cell C-7. You think maybe we can fit her in there too?"

"I think there's still room," the officer shrugged. "Alright, Sunshine. Let's get moving."

Miranda was forced to walk down a row of holding cells which were just as bloated from the holiday rush as the stores had been. An obviously intoxicated volus made catcalls at her as they walked by and some nutcase all the way down at the other end was screaming something about everyone being trapped in a computer simulation or something.

They stopped at a cell that already had three occupants. There was a salarian who looked high as a kite who seemed to have rediscovered his hands recently and was completely unaware of his surroundings. A silent, brooding turian was crouched in a dark corner like a feral dog. He was covered in blood and had his left eye and several deep wounds on his face heavily bandaged up. Currently smashing his head against the dented wall was a heavily scarred krogan who stopped long enough to look at the officers.

"Hey, Taz. Hi, Micah," the krogan said to the officers. From the calmness and first name basis of the krogan's introduction, it became obvious that this guy was apparently a regular here at C-Sec.

"We brought you a new cellmate," Taz said calmly before shoving Miranda inside.

"Good. It's not fun playing with the salarian," the turian in the corner said in a deep, raspy voice.

"Enjoy your new roommates, miss," Micah said sarcastically as the door shut.

Miranda had her back pressed against the cell door, a look of terror on her face as she contemplated her new cellmates. Both the one-eyed turian and the krogan were staring at her as though contemplating her as well.

"Hi. I'm Buttons," the krogan said.

"Of course you are..." Miranda nodded. She wondered if that was a nickname or if some insane individual actually decided to name a krogan "Buttons".

"Do you want to play a game?" the turian asked her darkly.

* * *

"Got any 7's?" Korvus, as Miranda had learned the turian was called, asked.

"Go fish," Miranda replied. She, Korvus, and Buttons all turned their heads silently at the salarian as he began eating his cards.

"See, this is why we didn't like playing with him," Buttons sighed.

* * *

Tali was in the process of helping move some boxes of cookie mix that had just been delivered to the mess hall when she was spotted by Mess Sergeant Gardner. "Tali! I'm glad you're here! Could you stop and help me a moment?" he requested.

"I'm supposed to be helping decorate," Tali replied. "Shepard just asked me to bring you these."

"It'll only take a second!" he promised. "I just need you to taste something for me."

"Will it kill me?" she asked suspiciously.

"It's dextro. That's why I need you to taste it," he replied. "I was making eggnog for the party and wanted to make something for you and Garrus, but I can't taste it without poisoning myself, and I think Garrus is busy helping put the tree up."

"Oh...well in that case, sure."

Gardner poured a little bit into a sterilized glass for her and she plopped an "emergency induction port" into it. "Let me know what that tastes like."

"Hmm...it's a little weak," she replied after tasting it.

Gardner reached for the turian rum and added some more to the pot. "Alright, just a second..."

 _30 minutes and half a bottle of alcohol later..._

Tali struggled to find her mouth with the straw and was leaning off to the side. "Still needs more...rum..." Tali said before hiccuping.

"Are you sure there's not enough already?" Gardner asked. He watched her teeter over and fall off her seat onto the floor. "Are you okay, Tali? How many fingers am I holding up?" He held up two fingers in front of her face.

"...eight?" she guessed. "Wait...I lost count...can I start over?"

* * *

"Is it standing on its own?" Garrus asked. "It's not teetering over?"

"Looks straight," Shepard nodded. "And if it falls over again, we can always do what my dad did the year the tree flattened my grandmother."

"Which is?"

"Get some string, nail the damn thing to the wall, and come up with an excuse for the commanding officer when he finally notices."

"You are the commanding officer," Garrus pointed out.

"Well then I'll have to explain to Joker why there's holes in the wall of "his" ship." They stood back and admired the undecorated tree when Shepard realized something. "Have you seen Kasumi or Miranda lately? Neither of them came back with Grunt."

"Not since they left for shopping yesterday," the turian shook his head. "Maybe they're still shopping? Kasumi told me that Miranda picked Jack for Secret Santa. Maybe they're just having a hard time finding something."

"Perhaps," Shepard supposed. "Hey, speaking of disappearances, where's Tali? I sent her to the mess hall with that cookie mix forty minutes ago..."

Just then, with timing that could have only been Christmas magic, the automatic door opened and Tali, who had been leaning against the other side, spilled over onto the ground. "Iss like I'm the sun and everything's revolving around me..." she slurred from the floor.

"Found her..." Shepard and Garrus sighed.

* * *

 _Nailing the tree to the wall was based on a true story too. Let's just say Christmas with my grandfather is even more of an event than it is with my dad._


	5. Four Days Before Christmas

Shepard was beginning to think he'd made a huge mistake by leaving the decoration of the Normandy's Christmas tree entirely up to the crew. He'd assumed that maybe they'd each hang a keepsake or something a little more sentimental on each of the branches, but what he instead found was a horrendous disaster of silly string and yarn streaming from every branch. Someone had taken a bag of stale bagels and ran the branches through them and there was a Blasto action figure rubber banded to the top. Next to the tree, a Nativity scene that someone had set up included dinosaurs, sharks, and robots.

"Why Blasto?" Shepard asked of the tree topper.

"Because he's technically a star," Joker pointed out.

"Grunt, stop eating the ornaments!" Shepard scolded when he caught the krogan eating a bagel off one of the branches.

"Sorry," he mumbled with a mouthful of branch. He spat it back out again, tried in vain to reassemble the bagel back on the tree, and walked off, his leg wrapped around a string of lights which he dragged out into the hall with him.

"I give up..." Jacob grumbled. "Someone else fix the damn lights this time."

* * *

Kasumi had asked Grunt to stay behind while she tried to get Miranda out of C-Sec. "You're not very good at stealth," was her exact words, which he protested seconds before tripping over a bucket someone had left on the floor and knocking over several racks of clothes in the shop.

Jack had quickly scrambled to hide his gift when she heard his heavy footsteps announcing his presence long before he was even on the stairs and told him not to come down there or he'd ruin the surprise.

Upstairs was nothing but endless complaints about how he was getting in the way or making things difficult for others to prep for the party which was just days away. No one wanted Grunt around and he suddenly realized that he didn't have a gift for Jack, or Shepard, whom he had drawn from the Secret Santa jar.

So he went to the room of his other best friend, someone he knew loved seeing him and would gladly help him in his plight to find them both a gift...

"Didn't I tell you to get the hell out of my room?" Zaeed asked when Grunt waved at him from the doorway.

"Yes!" Grunt exclaimed proudly. "Three times!"

"What do you want? I'm in the middle of something!" He was actually lying, as he'd just finished what he was doing earlier. Literally a second before Grunt had walked in, he'd placed his order for Garrus' gift and now all he had to do was walk to the Citadel and pick it up whenever he felt like doing so.

"I need help picking out gifts," Grunt replied with the saddest face he could muster.

Zaeed tried to stare Grunt down with a heart of stone, but the more he stared at him, the more sad and lost Grunt seemed. He really seemed genuine in his request for help. "Well, I have to go to the Citadel to pick something up," he said as his resolve started to waver. "If you want to come with me, I can try to help you find something." He stopped Grunt before the krogan could hug him. "So how many credits do you have on you?"

"Seven!" Grunt exclaimed proudly.

"Holy shit..." Zaeed sighed. "Okay, to the thrift store it is, then."

* * *

Deep within the overcrowded cells of C-Sec, past the cell where a volus was nursing a hangover and a hanar gang member was politely shouting abuse at anyone who walked past, a repeat offender, an ex-member of the Blue Suns, and a Cerberus agent were all caught up in conversation, the topic having moved to whatever had gotten them locked up this time.

"And then by the time I turned around, he had caught fire," Buttons finished his story.

Miranda was the only one that seemed to be horrified by the end of his tale, though she was doing a pretty good job of smiling and nodding as though it hadn't bothered her. Korvus was nodding thoughtfully and the salarian was so fast asleep in the corner that twice Taz had stopped by to make sure he wasn't dead.

"Well, I was at the grocery store and I saw this guy that owes me money, so we got into a fight in the middle of the cereal aisle," Korvus explained his story. "I lost an eye when he smashed my face against the edge of the shelving and they had to tase us both six times because we kept trying to get back up again, but hey, I won. If you think I look like shit, imagine how the other guy looks!"

Buttons pointed out towards the snoozing salarian. "And rumor has it that he got picked up for running around the strip naked and attacking people that he thought were vampires."

"I blame those Earth movies that have been popular lately," Korvus agreed. "So what about you, Miranda? What brings you here?"

"My friend's pet krogan stole a tree from the community garden and I got caught trying to put it back," she replied. She noticed the strange looks from her cellmates and quickly changed her story. "Uh...and then I killed someone to cover our tracks."

" _Psst..."_ Miranda jumped and looked around to see who was making that noise. She would have thought she was going crazy if it weren't for the fact that the other two seemed to have heard it too. Korvus, being a turian, had the best hearing of the three and was staring straight past Miranda where he thought he had heard the sound.

"I think there's a ghost trying to talk to you," Buttons said as he started looking in the direction that Korvus indicated.

"I think so too...unless...how long do hallucinogens typically stay in your system?" Korvus replied.

Buttons looked at the salarian laying on the floor. "A damn while, apparently."

" _Psssst..."_ the voice said again.

Miranda realized that she recognized the voice. "Kasumi?" she whispered. Kasumi flickered into visibility for just a second to confirm to Miranda that she was there.

Both Buttons and Korvus seemed alarmed when they saw her too. "Friend of yours?" the turian whispered.

"Yes...please don't say anything to alert the guards!" Miranda whispered back.

"Hey, a friend of Miranda's is a friend of ours," Korvus stated. Buttons nodded in agreement.

Miranda leaned right next to the spot where Kasumi had gone visible and tried to act casual in case there were any cameras around. Everyone in the cell remained silent as a patrolling guard walked by.

"You look like shit, Korvus," the guard said.

"I'd rather look like shit than you!" Korvus shouted after him.

"Ha ha. Screw you."

"That was my cousin," he informed the rest of the cell.

"Your family must have some really awkward dinner conversations," Buttons pointed out.

"Alright, he's gone," Kasumi said once Korvus' cousin was a good distance away.

"Kasumi, what are you doing here?" Miranda demanded.

"Well I tried calling you, but the line was busy. I guess about forty other people had the same idea," she said sarcastically, nodding towards the overcrowded holding cells. "So then I tried to bust you out, but C-Sec really seems to have beefed up their security since the last time I was here. I'm sure I can get through it, but I'd need to make a few calls to my connections, get a copy of the new layout schematics, things that would take some time."

"Okay, so what's your plan?" Miranda asked. When Kasumi didn't answer right away she added, "You _do_ have a plan, correct?"

"I'm working on it!"

"Kasumi, how long is it going to take you to get me out of here?!"

"Don't worry, I will get you out before the party," Kasumi reassured her. "I just wanted to let you know that it might take a little while. It's always a little hectic trying to operate around the busy holiday season, but you know what, I think I could really use the challenge."

"Well you better work out that challenge! You can't leave me in here over Christmas with an addict, a gang member, and a krogan!" She suddenly realized that she had just insulted the people that she was trapped in a small space with. "Uh, I mean...no offense."

"None taken," Buttons replied.

"I'd be pretty horrified if I had to be trapped in a room the size of a closet with me too," Korvus nodded.

"Well, if I can't work this all out in time, maybe I can go talk to Shepard," Kasumi said thoughtfully.

"Wait, what?" You mean the Commander doesn't even know that I'm in here? What have you and Grunt even been doing all this time?! Hasn't Shepard noticed I'm missing?!"

"Wait, you both know Commander Shepard?" Korvus said in shock. "Holy shit, one of my old buddies just told me he's with him! Say hi to Zaeed for me!"

"I'll pass it along," Kasumi nodded. To Miranda she cheerfully said, "Well, I sent Grunt back while I worked out my plan to bust you out, so as far as I'm aware he's been tearing down the lights and keeping Shepard on his toes for a while. And then I got distracted because I saw these really cute shoes on sale, so I just decided to finish my Christmas shopping to get it all out of the way."

"No wonder you haven't figured out a plan yet..." Miranda mumbled. "Get Shepard. He'll know how to get me out of here!"

"And admit I can't bust you out of here on my own?" Kasumi said in offense. "No way! We're going to try to get you out of here my way first!"

"What?! No! Tell Shepard!"

"I'll see you once I make a few calls to some old friends. Later Miranda!" Kasumi said before presumably walking away.

"Hey, do you think your friend can bust me out too? I promised my daughter I'd be at her dance recital next week, and I have a feeling I'm going to be in here for a while," Korvus said.

Miranda sighed. "We'll see, Korvus," she replied.


	6. Three Days Before Christmas

Every area of surface space in the mess hall was covered in cooking implements as Gardner prepared the food for the party, along with anyone who volunteered to help. Anyone who wanted to eat had to do so in their quarters. Shepard and Garrus were unaffected since they usually took their meals in Shepard's room anyway, so any complaints by the rest of the crew went largely unnoticed.

"Pick up the pace! The Christmas party is tomorrow!" Gardner shouted to the volunteers. He pointed at one of the crew members. "Decklin! Roll that gingerbread! I want six dozen cookies on sheets and ready to bake by the hour's end!" he ordered. He pointed to another. "Evan! Start peeling those potatoes!"

"But I'm not even on kitchen duty," Evan pointed out.

" _I said peel!"_ he commanded.

"Okay, I'm peeling! I'm peeling!" Evan replied as he grabbed potatoes from the bag.

"I found a recipe for the perfect cocoa mix!" an excited crew member shouted as he ran into the room with a copy of the recipe held over his head.

"Good job, Zeke! See, Evan? _Some_ people know how to go above and beyond to contribute!" Gardner stated. Evan glared at Zeke and his potato peeling became slower and more aggressive, leaving unsightly gouges in the potatoes.

Meanwhile in the rest of the Normandy, gifts were beginning to pile up under the tree. What lights that Grunt hadn't destroyed beyond repair were hung back up on the wall and someone who was probably drunk at the time but laughing right now had for some reason decided to decorate all of the toilet seats in both bathrooms so they looked like wreaths.

Zaeed and Grunt were busy pushing their gifts into the back behind the tree, the only place they could find room. "Are you really sure that's what you want to give them?" Zaeed asked with concern. "Because I know you only had seven credits, but I could probably lend you some..."

"Nope! This is perfect! They'll love it!" Grunt shook his head.

"Alright, but that's on you," he replied.

"Hmm," Kasumi sighed with content. "All this looks so nice."

"Yes. It's a shame that Miranda isn't here to see it all," Jacob said from behind her.

Kasumi spun around and stuttered when she saw him. "Jacob! Hi! What brings you here?"

"What, on the Normandy? Well right now I technically live here," he pointed out. "Kasumi, where is Miranda? Don't think I haven't noticed that you were the last person who saw her."

"You noticed me?" she blushed.

"Kasumi..."

"Hey, I already told Shepard that she's still on the Citadel. I don't know what's taking her so long. I guess the lines are really just that long."

"Kasumi..."

"What? I'm telling you the truth!" she lied. "I have no idea where Miranda is right now."

"Isn't she at C-Sec?" Grunt asked.

"Grunt!" Kasumi shouted at him.

"What? Miranda's at C-Sec?" Zaeed repeated. "What the bloody hell is she doing there?"

"Miranda has been at C-Sec all this time and you haven't bothered to tell anyone?" Jacob said in disbelief.

Kasumi quick tried to come up with a bright side towards Grunt having spilled where she was all this time. "Look, maybe it's a good thing you know now. I need help getting her out and I can't do it on my own."

"Just tell Shepard!"

"No, I'm not going to tell Shepard!" Kasumi interrupted him. "Just hear me out first, okay? This is what I'm going to need you all to do..."

* * *

 _First I need Grunt to be the distraction._

"Help! I need help!" Grunt shouted. "I'm stuck!"

A pair of C-Sec officers came running and sighed when they saw that Grunt had somehow wedged himself in between the bars of a railing. "Aren't you the same guy who did this a few days ago? Why would you climb in there again knowing that you would get stuck?" one of the officers asked.

"I don't know," Grunt shrugged. "I figured I'd see if my diet was working."

The other officer sighed before speaking into his earpiece. "We need about a dozen officers and a whole lot of Crisco in Sector 14, Quadrant 3. That krogan's stuck in the railing again."

 _Zaeed, I need you to keep watch and let us know when the coast is clear._

Zaeed casually pretended to be looking at something at one of the kiosks, but really he was watching to see how many C-Sec officers showed up. Quite a few of them, in fact. It seemed everyone wanted to gawk and stare at the krogan who somehow got stuck in a railing.

"Perimeter's clear," he whispered. "Hurry! They're getting him out faster than we thought possible!"

 _I'll work on disabling the lock on Miranda's cell while Jacob goes into the ventilation and makes his way towards her._

"This had better be worth it, Kasumi," Jacob said before climbing into the duct. He checked the schematics of the ventilation that Kasumi had acquired for him so that he could avoid any of the more dangerous areas and crawled for the cells.

It wasn't long before he realized that something was wrong. There was a thudding echo behind him when there shouldn't have been. "Can you move a little faster?" Grunt said from behind him.

"Grunt! What are you doing in here?!" Jacob asked. "Why didn't Zaeed warn me that you were..." He leaned over far enough to see past Grunt and saw Zaeed bringing up the rear.

"Everyone else was doing it. I just wanted to feel included," Zaeed shrugged.

"Kasumi, they followed me!" Jacob complained.

" _It's too late for them to come back. C-Sec's already blocking your escape,"_ Kasumi replied through their com. _"Just keep going forward with the plan while I think of a way to distract them so you can get back out again."_

Reluctantly, Jacob continued onwards with the other two in tow. Eventually they made their way to the other end, which spilled out into Block C, where Miranda was currently being held. They sat quietly and waited for the patrolling guard to pass by before removing the grating so Jacob could get out.

"Wait here!" Jacob instructed the other two while he snuck to Miranda's cell.

Miranda was surprised to see Jacob on the other side of the cell. "Jacob? What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Kasumi sent me," Jacob whispered. "We're here to bust you out." There was a soft buzzing sound and the cell unlocked. "And that is our cue to go."

"Wait, if Miranda's getting out of here, we are too!" Buttons insisted.

Jacob looked at the two standing directly behind her and looked at Miranda. "And who the hell are they?" he asked.

"Right now, they're my roommates. And they're coming with us."

Korvus looked at the salarian who was still passed out on the floor. Must have been a hell of a drug, whatever he took. "Eh. Doesn't feel right leaving him here while we leave."

"Fine, you can take the salarian too," Jacob grumbled. "But I'm not carrying him!"

They all struggled to get back into the vent and put the grating back on before the guard returned. The only witness was a man on Hallex who was staring at them like he was having a really bad drug trip.

"Zaeed!" Korvus said when he saw his old friend. "How are you doing, buddy?"

"Eh. Can't complain," Zaeed shrugged.

"Quiet, you two!" Jacob shushed them. "Get a move on! I think that guard is coming back!"

" _Jacob, the path's still blocked. You'll have to get out another way. I've updated your map so you know which route to take,"_ Kasumi suddenly informed him.

"Are you kidding? That way takes us right over C-Sec!" he complained.

" _I know. I'm sorry. It's the only vent that's all clear right now."_

"Alright," Jacob sighed. "Everyone to the left."

They were about halfway there when all of them stopped. "Did any of you feel movement?" Zaeed asked.

* * *

Taz and Micah were on a coffee break when both of them looked up from their datapads and exchanged a look. "You heard that, right?" Taz asked.

"I did," Micah nodded. They both looked up when they heard the rumble again.

"Micah," Taz said, "I think we should get back..."

They both stood up and took a few steps back. No sooner had they done so before the vents started to creak and buckle under an immense weight. There was a loud crack and the vent exploded and spilled its guts all over the table. Taz and Micah watched as seven people poured out of it into a pile of flailing limbs, including four that they didn't remember ever letting out of their cell before.

"Hey Taz," Buttons said calmly. "Hey Micah."

"Hey Buttons," they both replied simultaneously.

* * *

The six of them, plus "Sparkles" as Zaeed had dubbed the as of now nameless and still very unconscious salarian, sat side by side while they waited for C-Sec to come speak with them. The salarian was certainly going to be in one hell of a shock when he woke up and found out he'd been charged with trying to break out of prison while unconscious.

"So, what happened to your eye?" Zaeed asked Korvus as though having a pleasant conversation over lunch rather than to a fellow cellmate.

"Pretty much the same thing that happened to yours," Korvus replied. "And by that I mean it was gouged out on the corner of a shelf."

"Ouch..."

"Oh, it doesn't hurt that much. They've got me on the _good_ painkillers!" he said cheerfully.

"I hope Jack doesn't peek at her gift while I'm not there," Grunt added.

"I'm sure Jack isn't going to peek at her gift, Grunt," Jacob pointed out.

They all grew silent when the door opened and Taz and Micah came in with a stack of datapads. "So, we ran your IDs through the system and found out that you all have previous charges," Micah said. "Except for you. You're pretty clean, except for a misdemeanor traffic violation from when you were 14," he nodded towards Jacob.

"You had a traffic violation when you were 14?" Miranda asked.

"I wanted to know what driving was like and backed the car through the garage door," Jacob admitted.

"Okay, the krogan apparently is wanted on suspicion of destroying an entire display of 'Tickle Me Elcor' dolls," Taz read off the first datapad.

"They wouldn't stop laughing at me in a creepy monotone!" Grunt protested.

"And you..." Micah looked over the list of charges for Zaeed. After about a minute he looked at him in horror. "Good god, man! You didn't actually do all this did you?!" He handed Zaeed the list to look over.

Zaeed read over them, stopping at one entry to laugh. "Oh yeah, I remember that one!"

"Okay, since your little stunt trying to break your friend out of her cell is still technically illegal, we're going to have to arrest you all," Taz said as though that hadn't already been a foregone conclusion. "Micah, do you know where we could put the newcomers?"

"Uh...Taz, there's only one cell that's completely vacant right now, and they were the last ones in it," Micah pointed out.

Approximately half an hour later, the seven of them were jammed in the cell. "I'm going to kill Kasumi when I see her," Miranda mumbled.

"If you need help hiding the body, I know a place," Jacob replied.


	7. Two Days Before Christmas

The plan had not gone nearly as well as Kasumi had hoped. If C-Sec hadn't been more prepared the second time that Grunt got stuck in the railing then maybe the plan would have succeeded and Miranda would be out of confinement, but it didn't, and now Grunt, Zaeed, and her beloved Jacob were all in there with her. She hated to admit it, but she was out of ideas. Maybe with some more time, she would be able to come up with a better plan, but time was running out and Shepard was bound to notice them all gone sooner or later.

She took a deep breath before leaving her hiding place and entering the elevator. When she emerged, the crew was milling about as normal, admiring decorations, shaking their presents, getting yelled at for shaking their presents, or just sitting around and talking with their friends or people that weren't their friends but they were too polite to ask to go away.

Shepard was on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table and Tali asleep with her head in his lap. She looked so peaceful that Kasumi almost hated waking and/or disturbing her, but she knew that what she was about to say to Shepard would result in one or the other.

"Shepard! Hello!" Kasumi said with feigned cheerfulness.

Shepard seemed surprised to see her after her extended absence. "There you are! Where have you been hiding all this time?"

"I wasn't hiding from you! I was just doing some Christmas shopping...for um...a few days..." Shepard seemed to catch on that something was wrong and suddenly had a suspicious look on his face. "Okay, so I haven't really been shopping, but there's a funny story about where I've been all this time, and I promise you that eventually you're going to look back on it and laugh...eventually."

"Kasumi, where's Miranda?" Shepard sounded displeased, like he'd worked out a long time ago that something was wrong and that no one had bothered to tell him.

"Oh, she's with Jacob," Kasumi replied. "And Grunt...and Zaeed..."

Shepard had his arms crossed over his chest and was giving her a deeply accusatory look. "And they are where?" He put one arm on Tali to still her when she stirred slightly, disturbed by their conversation.

"Well you see, Grunt accidentally got her a little bit in trouble with C-Sec, so we all tried to break her out, and now they're all stuck in there and I can't figure out how to get them all back out again..."

Shepard stared at her for what must have been about a minute. "I'm sorry, but where did you say they were?" he asked her bluntly. Kasumi had a feeling that this was not going to end well for someone. She just hoped whoever it was, it wasn't her or anyone she cared about.

* * *

"Okay Frank, we've got a three elcor pile-up in the Presidium. Tell the guys down in medical we need a crane and a full team of paramedics, stat." Bailey was in awe once he finished with his orders. He stood next to the pile of elcor, hand clamped over his face and periodically sighing. "How does this even happen?"

"They all turned the corner too fast to see each other and couldn't slow down in time," another officer informed him.

Bailey slowly turned his head and stared at him. "Going too fast to slow down?! They're _elcor!_ "

The wounded elcor struggled to stand up, but they were all a tangled lump of limbs and flailing body parts. "In great pain: Please tell them to hurry faster," one of them pleaded.

Bailey noticed that the holiday crowd was moving in an odd pattern, as though trying to get away from a predator making its way straight through. A volus with a clipboard and two chatting asari backed out of the way as Shepard pushed his way past and made a beeline straight for Bailey. Kasumi and Garrus followed closely behind him, both rather amused by how everyone seemed to flee from Shepard's path.

The chatter between two turian officers responding to the scene of the accident died down as they both noticed Shepard in their presence and slowly they turned their head to Bailey to watch the conversation unfold.

"Shepard! Did you need anything?" Bailey asked, taking note that Shepard seemed to be a seething ball of rage at the moment. His burning hatefire was almost detectable by heat seekers at this point.

Shepard feigned a smile, trying to at least pretend to be pleasant with someone who had been helpful to him so many times before. "Bailey, I've been told that you have some of my squadmates detained at C-Sec, one of whom has been in there for a few days at this point?" he said with a strained friendliness.

Bailey remote linked into the names of those being kept in the holding cells. "It's the holidays, Shepard. We have a lot of people detained. Could you be a little more specific?"

"Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, Urdnot Grunt, and Zaeed Massani."

"Hmm...well we have three of them on record, but your friend Mr. Massani seems to have put down 'Ur Mum' where the form asked for his name and no one bothered to correct it."

"You have them filling out their own booking records now?" Garrus asked.

"Only when it gets really busy like this. We're not supposed to, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to Pallin or anything. The guy's enough of a hard ass as it is."

"If you can help me get my crew out, I'll gladly forget everything you just said," Shepard agreed.

"Done. Follow me, please."

"And leave us with the elcor?" one of the turians complained.

"Well it isn't like they're going anywhere anytime soon!" Bailey pointed out as he walked away.

* * *

Taz and Micah were both sitting at the front desk. It was surprisingly quiet, especially considering the chaos of the past couple of weeks. Taz looked up briefly from his magazine and did a double take when he saw Bailey and quickly got his feet down off the console in front of him.

"Did you need something Captain?" Micah asked, similarly trying to make himself look like he wasn't momentarily slacking off by using the C-Sec console to play Cookie Clicker.

"Yes. I believe my friend Commander Shepard here needs his squad back," Bailey replied. He motioned towards Shepard standing next to him.

"Hey Taz, Micah," Garrus waved. "Glad to see you two haven't been fired yet."

"Screw you, Garrus!" Taz snapped.

"Wait wait, back up..." Micah said. "Did you say Commander Shepard? As in you're Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre?" Suddenly he and Taz both seemed a lot more nervous. "And you say we have your crew..."

"I'm just going to need you to release Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, Urdnot Grunt, and Ur Mum from their cells, please," Shepard replied casually. He glared at them both. "Now..."

Taz hit a few buttons on the display in front of him. The holodisplay turned orange as it brought up what he was looking for. Bailey turned the screen around towards him so he could read it. "Let's see...your friends are facing charges for a failed attempt at a prison break, and your friend Miss Lawson seems to have been brought in even earlier for petty vandalism after she destroyed a rare, Thessian fruit tree and one of the tomato plants at the community garden."

"And C-Sec held her for several days for _that?_ " Garrus asked.

"Of course not," Taz shook his head. "We held her for several days because she then tried to make a run for it, tripped a C-Sec officer, pushed a volus into a fountain, and biotically knocked over a group of hanar trying to host a charity drive to benefit drell orphans."

"I see..." Shepard nodded. "Alright. Here's the deal. Taz, was it?" The turian nodded. "I'll gladly pay whatever bail or fine or whatever it takes for you to release my squad right now if you tell me one thing...I'm their commanding officer. How come I was never informed that any of them were held here?"

Taz and Micah both exchanged a panicked look. "Um, see, I'm sure we tried to get through to you..." Micah tried to answer.

"Really? Well apparently you weren't really trying all that hard because we've been docked here for almost a week now and I haven't heard word from anyone that any of my crew members were being held here at C-Sec," Shepard pointed out. "They could have been reported for abandoning their posts, and that would not fair well on any of them, don't you think?"

"No, sir," Taz shook his head.

"What if someone was looking for them and panicking that they might be dead somewhere? You didn't think it was important to let me know that you had them?"

Micah replied, "Well, that's not really our call..."

"Well then whose call was it, Micah?" Bailey asked him. "Because I'm pretty sure that informing relevant parties is a standard part of the booking process."

"Considering they didn't even fill out the proper forms themselves, could you really blame them for missing that step, though?" Garrus pointed out. Both Taz and Micah suddenly looked at the floor when they realized that everyone was aware that they weren't even doing their own jobs properly.

Taz avoided looking Shepard in the face as he hit a few more buttons on the screen, which turned from orange to a deep blue. "We'll uh...let them off with a fine this time," he replied. "Just make sure Miss Lawson stays away from the community garden."

"Why?" Shepard asked in a low, icy tone. "Did the tomato plants take out a restraining order on her?"

"What about their cellmates?" Kasumi suddenly spoke up. "The turian and some krogan named Zipper or Bowtie or something like that..."

"You seriously want us to let Korvus and Buttons out too?" Micah asked like she was crazy. "Buttons will be back in there within a week and I'm pretty sure Korvus ate one of his previous cellmates at some point..."

"All we found was a boot and the words "help me" written in blood," Taz added.

"Yes, I seriously want you to let them out. Oh yeah, and the salarian. I think Zaeed called him Sparkles?"

Micah and Taz looked at Shepard. He nodded like he expected them to be let out too. They then looked at Bailey who stared them down. "Just let them all go, Taz," Bailey replied. "Shepard's not going to leave without them and I'm sure Micah wants to get back to clicking on cookies."

"You're playing that game too?" Garrus asked. "I've been up all night with that stupid game!"

"I know! It's so addicting!" Micah nodded while Taz was busy organizing the releases of Miranda's cellmates on his console.

They were waiting just outside C-Sec when Bailey walked Shepard's discharged squadmates and Miranda's former cellmates out. Sparkles was still unconscious and was slung over Korvus' shoulder.

"Bye, Taz. Bye, Micah," Buttons said on his way out.

"Goodbye, Buttons..." both of them grumbled.

Miranda was relieved to finally be out of there, at least until she saw Kasumi standing next to Garrus and waving at her. She suddenly wished there weren't so many witnesses around to see her flay her alive.

"So..." Shepard began, looking at Miranda. "Apparently you pushed a volus into a fountain?"

"He was hogging the walkway!" Miranda replied defensively.

* * *

There was only less than a day before the Normandy Christmas party and everything was almost ready. The missing squadmates were all back home, though Miranda was avoiding Kasumi currently. Jacob seemed to have forgiven her surprisingly quickly much to her delight while Zaeed and Grunt never really seemed to care about their quick stint in the C-Sec brig.

Mess Sergeant Gardner reassured Shepard that all of the cooking was done and the cookies were baked and ready to be placed on festive trays. The decorations were all set up and inspected for potential fire or falling hazards after Grunt's seemingly endless mission to destroy every light strand on the ship and not once did the tree fall over on someone's grandmother and have to be nailed to the wall.

Really the only thing out of place were the three stowaways who had followed them back to the ship. "Hey, can I bum a ride to Omega off you guys?" Korvus asked before walking on with the unconscious salarian in tow. "Kay, thanks," he said when Joker opened his mouth to say something.

"I love what you've done with the place!" Buttons said while he looked around. "It looks just like the decorations at C-Sec!"

"Um...I think we're stuck with them until after the party," Miranda said while they watched her cellmates make themselves at home in the lounge. Korvus had thrown Sparkles over the back of the couch like a throw blanket and was currently using him as neck support.

"The bar is restocked," Shepard said as he aligned the last bottle of vodka on the shelf next to some odd, dayglo pink liquid with the consistency of nail polish of mystery origin that had apparently come with the bar.

"And Wrex isn't around to mix the drinks, so we shouldn't have a repeat of the last Normandy party," Garrus added.

"Wait, what happened at the last party?" Jack inquired.

"Shepard got blasted out of his mind, started freaking out, and ran through the Normandy pulling his clothes off and screaming that they were haunted."

Shepard clamped his hand around Garrus' mouth. "We agreed never to speak of that again," he said darkly.

"Wait, that _was_ you?" Tali spun around. "Joker told me a homeless batarian snuck on board the ship!"

"Don't even get me started on you, Miss 'Takes Three Sips of a Turian Beer and Forgets How Chairs Work'!" Shepard retorted.


	8. Christmas Eve

The party was officially kicked off by Sparkles falling off the back of the couch and waking up sober but confused, realizing that he was on a strange ship that he didn't recognize, and proclaiming, "Wow, that was one hell of a PTA meeting..."

"Wait, what the hell is this crap?" Jack asked of the music that EDI was piping over the intercom.

"It is classical Christmas music by the 21st Century artist known as Michael Buble," EDI replied. "I was instructed to play festive music to help with the mood."

"Well it sounds like shit! Here, let me handle the music..." She went to the nearest AI interface and uploaded an album from her own collection. "There! Much better!" The slightly more traditional sounding music was suddenly replaced with a cavalcade of screaming, banging on a drum kit, and what sounded like jingle bells and chainsaws.

"What...did you put on...?" Shepard asked in horror.

"Only the most famous turian/krogan shock metal band out of Omega," Jack replied. "Granted they don't have much competition for that title. This is their Christmas album!"

" _Thrasher Maw Presents: Slashing Through the Snow,"_ Shepard read off EDI's display at the AI station. "There is a band called Thrasher Maw?"

"Oh! I heard of this album!" Zaeed stated. "They took several traditional human Christmas songs and reworked the lyrics to be about famous Omega serial killers!"

"Thrasher Maw wrote a disturbing Christmas song about me?" Garrus said proudly when he noticed a song titled _'Hark the Archangel's Victims Scream'_ on the track listing.

Shepard decided not to touch the music out of fear of retaliation and continued walking around, checking on everyone at the party. The booze was already being hit hard. Garrus was a little displeased that Korvus had already drank most of the good dextro stuff, despite the fact that he wasn't supposed to be drinking alcohol with his painkillers. Twice he had to request that Tali, who was already tipsy, stop pulling all the little reindeer off the garland on the wall and stuffing them into her pockets. Others secretly started pulling them off and sneaking them to her to get around his scolding.

Out into the mess hall, all available surfaces were covered in plates containing food, cookies, and drinks such as eggnog and cocoa. Most would grab a plate and carry it off elsewhere, but some, like Kasumi, seemed content to just stand right next to the cookie trays and eat one after another until half a tray was gone. Shepard noticed one empty plate covered in chocolate icing before looking up and finding out why it was gone already.

"Okay, which one of you guys gave Legion cake?" Legion stood next to the sink with a guilty look on his face and chocolate cake smashed all over his hands and the spot where his mouth might have been if he had one.

"Shepard, maybe you should sit down and enjoy the party?" Kasumi suggested while she bit the head off a gingerbread man.

"Someone has to keep an eye on you all. I'm especially worried about Jack. I think she's planning something."

"Okay, it's called 'krogan jousting'," Jack explained to Zaeed while they walked past. "What you do is you jump on the back of the nearest krogan and try to steer them into each other. The last one to fall off and get trampled to death by their krogan wins!"

"Interesting..." Zaeed replied thoughtfully.

Shepard motioned towards them like they had just proved his point. "Shepard, Tali's been looking for you," Kasumi pointed out. "Go talk to her!"

Shepard noticed Tali struggling to climb into a chair that seemed to be escaping from her the more she tried to get on it. "Alright, but make sure someone refills those cookie trays! They're already starting to get low!" He grabbed the back of Tali's chair and held it in place so it would stop sliding across the floor. "Do you need any help there, Tali?"

"No, no...I got it..." she replied, her voice slow and slurring. She pulled herself up on top of the seat and flopped down across it on her stomach, like a small child that couldn't quite master how to climb into the big kid swing at the park by themselves. "See? I got it!" she replied.

"Yeah, you got it alright," Shepard replied sarcastically before helping her sit upright and pushing her towards the lounge.

"I...AM...KROOOGAN!" a booming voice shouted, which almost drowned out the sound of a crew member pleading, "Wait! I don't want to play this game!" before Buttons and Grunt were both steered into each other at a sharp charge. Jack still clung to Grunt's back, causing them both to jump up in celebration, while the poor crew member went flying off the other krogan and landed on the pie table.

"Alright," Jack shouted. "Who dares challenge me and Grunt next?"

"Or maybe..."

"Shepard! They're fine! Go party!" Kasumi ordered.

* * *

The late hours of the night soon became the early hours of the morning and the Normandy's night cycle continued to wage a battle onwards. By sometime around 4am Alberta time, most of the heavy drinkers either moved back to their designated sleeping space or passed out in a chair or on the floor somewhere. The shutters had been sealed to block out the light from a nearby star and lights had been shut off by the last people out, leaving the room to be illuminated solely by the brightly colored lights of the oddly decorated Christmas tree, as well as the ones over the floor by the bar that someone (probably Grunt) had torn off the wall. Korvus and Buttons were both curled up under one of the mess hall tables, though Buttons stuck out enough to trip any drunk who tried to walk past. Sparkles was wandering around, looking at all the passed out bodies in horror as though he were looking at the aftermath of an apocalypse and he was the only survivor.

"Some people really don't know how to party," he mumbled to himself.

Grunt had fallen asleep under the tree and was using a particularly soft present containing someone's traditional Christmas sweater as a pillow and was reflexively gnawing on the edge of what turned out to be a decades old fruit cake. Jacob was too busy being passed out on the floor to notice that Kasumi had snuggled up beside him. Shepard was sprawled across the back of the couch, if only because Garrus had already claimed the cushions below. The only ones still active on that particular floor were Samara, who took advantage of the ensuing quiet to meditate by the tree, Thane, who walked in just long enough to abscond with an entire plate of cookies, and Chakwas, who was busy finding every bottle of aspirin in the medical bay in preparation for the coming morning.

Despite the fact that no one had been hit harder by the booze train than Tali, she still managed to cling to consciousness, albeit just barely. She was far beyond the stage of being able to walk straight and so it was a miracle that she'd managed to crawl her way over to Shepard and even more of a miracle that she could pull herself into a semi-standing position behind the couch so she could reach him.

"Shepard," she whisper-shouted at him. She tried to shake him awake but couldn't seem to master the motor skills necessary to do so and ended up slapping his shoulder with her hand instead. Garrus growled softly but no one else seemed to have been disturbed by her loudish voice. "Shepard, I need to ask you something. Iss...been bothering me all night..."

Shepard slowly turned his head to look at Tali. She smelled strongly of turian rum despite the sealed suit, though it was highly probable that she might have spilled some eggnog on herself at some point due to her alcohol-influenced lack of coordination.

"Huh? Tali?" Shepard mumbled. He still hadn't completely sobered up and was still a little intoxicated from the festivities himself, though he probably was better off than most who had been drinking that night. Some of the ornaments towards the bottom of the tree jingled when Grunt rolled over, the rock hard fruit cake still in his teeth.

"I can...can...cannot? I cannot sleep," her voice slurred. "Can I ask you somefin tha's been bothering me?"

"What is it, Tali?" he groaned. Shepard accidentally punched Garrus in the jaw when his hand flopped down from the back of the couch. The turian barely seemed to even notice and merely brushed off his nose with the back of his hand, only stopping when he realized that his glove was missing and he couldn't remember ever even taking it off.

"How do reindeer fly without wings...or some sort of propulsion system?"

Shepard squinted at Tali in the dark when she asked her question and heard a chuckle coming from Samara over by the tree. "Come again?" he asked. He wasn't sure if he'd heard it correctly in the slight haze of past inebriation that still had its hold over him.

"I don't...don't understand how these...flying reindeer animals from your Earth system...do all reindeer fly, or is it just that Santa guy's reindeer? And if it's just Santa's reindeer, why are they so much more specialer than the other reindeer?" she continued. Shepard stared at her like she'd stood too close to a particularly radioactive star and just turned into the Toxic Avenger. "They look heavy and they're not very aerodynamic...how do they fly fast enough to deliver presents to everyone in only one night? That does...doesn't seem physically possible without time travel or, or some...sort of...wormhole device. Does he use mass relays? Does he deliver to your colonies too, or do you have to be on Earth to get presents? That doesn't...seem very...fffair to everyone else if he doesn't. And what of that one with the glowing nose? Is he ssssome sort of genetic mutant or a c-c-cyborg or somefin? Or is he like this kid I knew once back on the fleet who somehow stuffed an LED light up his nose? You know, it took us forever to get that thing back out again, and we still don't know how he managed to get ahold of it..."

"Oh my god, Tali! Go to bed!" Shepard pleaded to more chuckling from Samara.

"Why did you let her watch that Christmas special?" Garrus mumbled while she continued on with her drunken, disjointed tangent.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Shepard whispered back.

"That's what you said the day you introduced Mordin to energy drinks..."

Shepard eventually managed to get Tali to settle on the floor behind the couch. He covered her up with his favorite N7 sweatshirt and decided to try to sleep off the rest of the night in his own quarters, since he wasn't drunk enough for the back of the couch to be comfortable anymore.

The glow from the fish tank was dim, allowing only the nocturnal fish to move about while the rest of them slept. Sniffles the space hamster was noisily running on his wheel. Shepard cursed the lack of diurnal space hamsters when his pet continued to make noise even as he climbed into bed. Soon he forgot about the hamster and the noise he was making when he drifted off to sleep under the warm blanket.

Tomorrow the incinerator would be working overtime to burn up the discarded wrapping paper while the trash compactor would be clogged with empty cardboard boxes. And yet Shepard was content to just sleep for the time being.

* * *

 _I accidentally mispronounced "thresher maw" when talking Mass Effect with my sister once and from there it became a headcanon that there's a turian/krogan thrash metal band by the name of Thrasher Maw. We came up with the band's entire backstory and everything and let me tell you, it's bonkers._


	9. It's Christmas!

Grunt rolled over onto his other side once more and opened his sideways facing eyes. The one on the right side of his head was staring directly at the floor while the one on the left side of his head was met with its own reflection on a piece of a dented tin pie pan that someone had strung up. He had half a demolished Christmas gift in his mouth and he noted that whatever it was didn't even taste all that good. Clearly it must be some byproduct of noodles.

His eyes slowly drifted shut as he started to doze off once more. "Huh. It's Christmas," he mumbled to himself. Not even ten seconds later, both eyes shot wide open once more. "It's Christmas..." he said a little more excitedly. Grunt sat up so fast that several ornaments flung from the tree branches from the force of the impact. "HEY EVERYBODY! IT'S CHRISTMAS!" he shouted over the sounds of groaning and hangovers.

Grunt sprung to his feet and went flying towards the elevator screaming, "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" all the way past. He rode the elevator down to engineering and ran down the hall, skidding to a halt in Zaeed's room. "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" he shouted, waking Zaeed up with a start.

"I was wondering when he would wake up," Zaeed grumbled to himself. Admittedly he predicted he'd be there an hour ago.

Grunt next charged down to the cargo hold. "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" he shouted at Jack before charging back up on the opposite set of stairs. "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" she could hear him shouting all the way back to the elevator. "IT'S CHRISTMA-" he was cut off, presumably by the closing of the elevator doors, though he could still vaguely be heard shouting "It's Christmas" on his way up.

"Gee, I wonder what day it is?" Jack yawned while she stretched and got up.

Shepard probably got about two hours of sleep at the most before he heard the pounding of krogan feet charging from the elevator towards his bed. "SHEPARD!" a loud and boisterous voice shattered the silence. "WAKE UP!" Shepard hardly had a chance to react before almost 700 pounds of krogan leapt through the air and flattened him. "IT'S CHRISTMAS! IT'S CHRISTMAS!" Grunt shouted in his face while he attempted to catch his breath.

The weight of the krogan kneeling on his mattress caused it to indent enough that Shepard was worried that should he spring back up, it would bounce back with enough force to fling him into the ceiling in a comical manner reminiscent of a cartoon.

"Grunt...can't breathe..." Shepard gasped under him.

"Come on, get up! You've slept long enough and we can't open gifts without you!" Grunt grabbed Shepard and dragged both him and his blanket from the bed as he ran with him towards the elevator.

"Can't I at least put a shirt on first?!" Shepard asked as the door closed behind him.

No sooner did they make it back downstairs before Grunt ran to the tree and came back. "You were my Secret Santa! I got you this!" he shouted, shoving an individually wrapped slice of processed cheese-like food product into his face.

Shepard accepted it with a forced smile. "Oh, you got me a slice of fake cheese? That's perfect because I was just getting hungry and now I don't have to walk all the way to the mess hall to get anything." He noticed that it was warm and limp from sitting under the tree when he accepted it and had to stop himself from gagging.

"Yeah, and it comes with its own wrapping paper so I didn't even have to wrap it first!" Grunt said jovially.

He wasn't all that surprised. On Garrus' birthday, Grunt had given him a soda that he already drank most of that Garrus couldn't even safely consume. Apparently to a krogan, the greatest gift you could give someone was whatever was found in the refrigerator five minutes after remembering what day it was. He guessed it might have been considered more heartwarming on a planet where the dinner menu was decided by whatever critter didn't run fast enough that day.

The rest of the room slowly stirred, having since been woken up by the krogan who was eagerly digging through the boxes under the tree for presents with his name on it already. Tali subtly eyed Shepard when she realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt, which Shepard seemed to remember just now too as he was currently reclaiming his sweatshirt from her so he had something to wear.

The elevator door opened and Jack shouted, "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" in a mimicry of Grunt.

"Now don't you start!" Shepard barked back at her.

* * *

Some aspirin and several pots of coffee later, there was a frenzy to unwrap gifts. Paper and bows went flying everywhere and the room looked like a battlefield had broken out at a department store.

"Another shirt. Ha ha," Jack said before throwing another one onto the growing pile.

"These units are pleased with these gifts," Legion announced as he sorted through the video game activation codes he'd been gifted.

"What the hell is this thing?" Garrus asked. He held an electronic toy that looked like some kind of fuzzy, demonic cat that had been in a package marked, "Love your Secret Santa".

"Oh, you got a Furby! You're supposed to talk to it and it talks back!" Jacob replied.

"A toy actually knows what I'm saying?" Garrus said skeptically. He looked at it and asked it, "Hello, fuzzbutt. Do you want to eat my soul?"

"Yum yum!" it replied. Garrus instantly freaked out and whipped it across the room. He glared at Jacob when he dared to laugh at him and asked, "Okay then, what did you get?"

"I got..." Jacob unwrapped a box and opened it. He stared inside as though he didn't actually believe what he got.

"Well?" Garrus pressed.

"I got a pack of gum..." Jacob said, removing the gum, "...and a lemon." Sure enough he also removed a whole lemon from the box. "What the hell..."

"Why does everyone keep giving me framed holos of a sloth in a spacesuit?" Zaeed asked. He had a growing stack of them by this point.

"Shepard, I got this for you too!" Garrus said before dropping a gift in his lap. Shepard unwrapped it and looked back at him with a baffled expression when he saw it was a framed holo of Garrus looking as creepy as possible. "Now you don't have to walk all the way down to the battery every time you forget what I look like!"

"Thanks Garrus, I'll certainly treasure it," Shepard replied sarcastically.

"Jack! I thought of you and I got you this!" Grunt said as he held out his gift to his best friend.

Jack laughed when she saw that it was a thawed out freezer waffle. "That's exactly what I got you!" she replied before holding a freezer waffle out to him.

By now, most of the gifts had been unwrapped. Grunt was standing on a mountain of food, a can of spray cheese in one hand, a handful of varren jerky in the other, and a mouthful of bacon. Legion was happily cozying up inside his new "room", which was actually just a cardboard box full of packing peanuts that someone had saved for him from one of their packages. Thane was still confused as he stared at his Secret Santa gift, which was nothing more than a really big sock.

While they were busy playing with their new gifts, Miranda wandered in, a datapad in one hand, and a cup of the strongest coffee she could make in the other. "I am so glad this holiday is finally over," she sighed. She flopped down on what she thought was an unoccupied lounge chair but jumped back up again when the chair shrieked. There was a flicker of distortion before Kasumi became visible once more after having just been sat on.

"Sorry. I thought that chair was empty," Miranda apologized. She took a seat next to her on the edge of the couch instead.

"That's okay. I should have seen that coming, in hindsight," Kasumi replied. "You missed most of the Great Unwrapping. There's just a few more Secret Santa presents to go through, and everyone's done."

"Oh no..." Miranda grumbled. "After all that with C-Sec, I completely forgot I was supposed to get Jack a present!"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I noticed you hadn't bought her a gift, so I gave her something in your name. You can thank me later."

Miranda was instantly relieved. "Thanks. What did you get her?"

Jack turned the gift over in her hands and started unwrapping it. Once she'd gotten the paper off, she stared at it silently a moment before holding it up and demanding, "Okay, which one of you jackasses got me _'The Elcor Tabernacle Choir Sings Christmas Carols'_?"

* * *

 _Merry Space Christmas, everyone! I finally got this bitch of a fic finished! Now I can go back to that Fallout fanfic I've been working on for seven and a half years!_


End file.
